I'm an Adult Now. I can do anything I want!

A common myth that teenage adults have as they start to get closer to that arbitrary line of being an 'adult' is that adults can do anything they want. I'm sure millions of parents have heard from their teen, at one time or another, "I'm an adult now so I can do what I want." A statement that clearly is a childish justification for poor decision making.

Why? Because usually your teen will come out with this statement if you won't let them do something that they really want. To be fair, sometimes it's just the parents being overly protective but, for whatever reason, being an 'adult now' is a childish way to say I don't care for your concern I'm going to do what I want. (Though in that last sentence you can exchange the word 'concern' for 'unreasonable attitude' or more likely yet just insert the word 'sh_t').

Apart from the obvious physical differences the key difference between children and adults is that adults make all their own decisions. Children do make some of their own decisions and are given more and more decisions as they get closer to adulthood but making all your own decisions isn't the same as 'being able to do anything you want'.

Whilst adults do make a lot of their own decisions they can still be held accountable for poor decision making. Just ask Britney Spears who lost custody of her children due to her poor choices. All adults are answerable to the standards of behaviour that we, as a society, have agreed upon expressed in something called 'The Law'.

Of course few people know the fine details of the Law but most of us know simple stuff like treating each other with respect. Most of us also have a fair idea when we do something that breaks the law too.

Leading to the point of this article is the idea that the decisions any one of us get to make is largely affected by decisions made by other people. Decisions that are beyond our control. Things like the Law is one such example of decisions made by others that can affect our choices but I'm referring to decisions on a more local and personal level.

For example. Lets say your lawnmower is broken but you need to cut your lawn before the landlord comes over for a routine inspection of your house. You could either; 1) Not worry about cutting the lawn and wear the consequences. 2) Hire a lawnmower or, 3) Borrow the neighbours lawnmower.

Decision two, hire a lawnmower. If you have the money and you can find somewhere that has a lawnmower available for hire then good. Another decision under your control. There's a few variables that you can't control though. If they can't be met then this decision may not be open to you.

Decision three, borrow the neighbours lawnmower. This one could be straight forward if you're on good terms with your neighbour however this decision is only open to you if your neighbour is the kind of person who would like to help you out.

You see, some decisions we have are made available to us through the decisions of others. Lets say, the last time you borrowed your neighbours lawnmower, they had to ask you for it back and you returned it with no fuel at all even though, when you borrowed it, it had a full tank.

Maybe this time you won't be able to borrow it. Your poor choices the last time you borrowed the lawnmower have lead to a situation where you no longer can make a decision to borrow it again. It's not an option, unless you have an extremely forgiving neighbour.

Being an adult who can seemingly do anything they want is not about passing some arbitrary age where society says you're an adult. Being an adult is about understanding how the world works and how you can give yourself the widest possible number of choices when it comes to decision making.

In general, if you do the right thing by other people, they'll be more open and receptive to the decisions you want to make. Not only that, they may just throw in a few more options that could help you out. Doing the wrong thing will almost certainly mean fewer choices.

It's not a hard lesson to learn but it's one that so called 'teen adults' fail to grasp. They'll spend a lot of time trying to do the right thing by their friends yet fail to apply the same concept to the rest of the people in their lives.

You should see our (almost) brand new conservatory, half of which is my art studio. 'Lucky me!' I think to myself. Not every creative bod can boast that. It's HUGE! Like a giant greenhouse.

We first moved to our pleasant cul-de-sac house - great for raising kids - when our son, who's on the cusp of thirty-one, was four. One of the main reasons that we wanted it was that, apart from its location on the fringes of a historic market town in rural Hampshire, UK, it had a sizable conservatory looking onto the back garden. It was brown wood framed and had a corrugated transparent roof sloping down from downstairs ceiling height. On the face of it, it doesn't sound that glamourous, but we loved the idea of a conservatory. Luxury! I even liked the red brick walls which it was built against - the original exterior of the house - and the light …

Is it a scam? Is the sales message too good to be true? Can you really sit back, relax and get paid thousands of dollars in residual payments?

If you've discovered the site getpaidtodraw.com and have been looking for someone who has bought this product before taking that leap then this review will peel back the glossy sales message and give you the answers. Prior to buying this product I came across much distrust and misinformation about getpaidtodraw.com by people who hadn't purchased it. There was a real need for information so I decided to take the leap and make the purchase specifically so I could write this informed review. Note that I am not, in any way, a getpaidtodraw.com affiliate.

For this review I will be focusing on the getpaidtodraw system which includes; the ebook, instructional videos and database along with access to the systems author Jules Camber (who replies to emails as 'Jamie, President of Champ Entertainment, Inc and Beats365, LLC'). I'll touch …

A common problem among skaters dealing with work/life commitments (typically older skaters with families, careers, or both) is finding the time to actually spend on a skateboard. In fact, life in general getting in the way of skateboarding, is what often leads so many to drop out of the sport, only to rediscover it later, once everything else starts to even out.

I'm certainly in that category. Never really giving skateboarding away altogether but only using a skateboard to get from A to B, when I didn't have a vehicle, for many years. In the last couple of years I've been trying to get back into the sport properly, i.e. building up my trick list and skating for fun and not just to get from A to B.

The problem is I have so many interests, projects, paid work, and more, that I would often leave skateboarding to the end of my day. Kind of as something to look forward to. Except I wouldn't be that motivated to really improve because my mind would be fried from everything …

How often have you heard it said that kids today are smarter than their parents? I’ve heard it quite frequently in the media – even Dr Phil has said it. I say speak for your self. It’s not true and don’t let the media fool you.

Today’s kids may have access to more information that may give them more choices but in my experience, they only take in what they want to hear and still make stupid, uninformed decisions. Just like we used to at their age.

Like any cross section of people there will be exceptions. There are kids that are genuinely smarter, more mature and responsible for their age. However the vast majority know everything they need to know by the time they turn fourteen. They’re ‘adult’ enough to be responsible for all their own decision making so parents should just let them do what they please…right? Just like we thought at fourteen.

Don’t be fooled. Just because your son knows how to download MP3’s onto an ipod, or your daughter can chat to five friends at the same time on he…

Using CafePress you can open your own online clothing and giftware store with no upfront costs.

Everything in your store is printed on demand and sent to your customers by CafePress. They charge a base price for each of the over 250+ items you can sell. You earn whatever markup you place on each item. All you have to do is keep your store stocked with fresh designs, and drive your target market to your store.

Once you're set up it's a side hustle you can tinker away at from any device. Create designs on your tablet while watching the TV, promote your shop when you're browsing social media on the bus. Notify your customers of new designs using the built in newsletter features while you sip a fresh brew at your local coffee shop. It's the business you can take anywhere and work on anytime!

Unfortunately it's not as convenient for your customers. Not a single one of CafePress' official shop templates (at the time of writing) are mobile friendly. They're passa…

I was all ready to bag the town of Bute as not being worth the visit but then Enigma and I had a look around Gunner Bill's Gallery in Bute and I changed my mind. First though, let's back up a bit.

After spending our Saturday at the Cornish Festival in Moonta, Enigma and I were wondering how to spend our Sunday, the final day of our holiday? We knew there was a fair on at Kadina for the final day of the Cornish Festival but we had a sneaking suspicion we'd see pretty much all the same food vans we saw at the fair at Moonta so decided not to go.

I read in a tourist magazine a single paragraph about the town of Bute which mentioned that the town had an award winning fauna park and a Gallery/museum/craft shop. Thinking the fauna park might be a good animal photo opportunity and the Gallery could be interesting we decided to go. Bute was on the way home anyway (we passed through it on the trip to Port Broughton but it was dark then).

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Agnes Tricoire, presents to the court a reproduction of the kiss mark on a painting by artist American Cy Twombly.Photo: MSNBC

In researching this post I'm happy to say that American artist, Cy Twombly's all white artwork, 'Untitled', is an exception to his art rather than the norm. Perhaps that is why the artwork is valued at just over 2.8 million dollars and lays some credibility on my rationale in pricing my own blank canvas in my video guide to Pricing your artwork for sale.

Regular readers will know my distaste for blank canvas artworks so I could not pass up this opportunity to comment on Rindy Sam, a 30 year old, female French artist, who loved Twombly's blank artwork enough to kiss it with fully, lipstick loaded, lips.

The incident happened on July 19, 2007, where the painting was part of a traveling exhibition on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the southern French city of Avignon. The kiss was described as an 'a…